


It's Enough

by orphan_account



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 21:22:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What they have isn't perfect, but it's enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Enough

Years go by.

Ahiru isn’t living out the lifespan of a normal duck; it becomes obvious after a while that she’s aging much more slowly, that she seems to be on a human timetable. That’s good, because the thought of losing her early and living the rest of his life without her is something Fakir has never liked to think about.

She goes almost everywhere with him. People think he’s strange, and whisper about him behind his back. Some of the bolder ones even ask rude questions to his face. He ignores them or sneers at them, whichever the situation requires. Ahiru worries that this is isolating him, and though she loves being by his side, tries to offer to stay home alone. He refuses, and points out that he’s pretty isolated anyway. It’s hard to form real bonds with people who have a different set of memories than you do and would consider you mentally unbalanced if you slipped up and started talking about your old teacher who was a cat, or your anteater classmate, or the girl who was a duck who was Princess Tutu. He admits that it can be a little lonely sometimes, but it’d be worse if he didn’t have her.

The years go by, and Fakir graduates from the Academy, starts attending university. There’s a girl in one of his classes who obviously likes him. She’s pretty, and nice, but she doesn’t make him feel the way he does when he looks at Ahiru. So when she asks him out, he turns her down without even having to think about it.

Ahiru’s there to see it happen, because the girl caught him after class when he was sitting by the lake while she swam around. She feels a pang of both jealousy and sadness when she watches the scene, and later asks Fakir why he turned the girl down, because she doesn’t understand why he did that. Even though she’s secretly, selfishly glad that she won’t have to watch him with her, that she won’t spend a lonely, awful evening at home imagining their date and wishing she was in the other girl’s place, she nevertheless wants to know why.

Because I still love you, he tells her. Because I always will. I don’t want anyone else.

Her eyes fill with tears, and even though she’s happy he still feels that way about her, she tells him that she doesn’t think that’s fair to him. She’s just a duck, after all, and he’s a human, and how can she make him happy like that?

Every day he has with her is happiness, he says. And since when is life ever fair? After spending so much of his life believing he was fated to die, he’s just grateful to still be alive, and to have her with him. He doesn’t need anything else. He chose to stay by her side forever because he wanted to.

She doesn’t know what to say to that, so it’s his turn to ask the questions. Is she happy? Would she rather he find someone else, would she rather go find a drake to have ducklings with? If she thinks she can’t make him happy the way she is, doesn’t that go the other way too? He’s clearly afraid of the answers, but asks anyway.

With tears still in her eyes, she answers every question. Yes, I’m happy. No, I don’t want ducklings with someone else. No, you make me very happy. She hesitates, and returns to the earlier question, admitting that she’d be a little sad if she saw him with someone else – and she’s ashamed of that, make no mistake about it – but in the end she just wants him to be happy, more than anything else.

Fakir is quiet for a moment, and then he asks one more question. If he tells her that he only needs her to be happy, that he’s perfectly content with his life as it is, will she believe him?

Ahiru nods. Of course she will, she says. And she does.

Maybe it’s not ideal. Maybe it’s nobody else’s idea of happily ever after. But they’re happy, and that’s all that matters, in the end.


End file.
